NYTimes Sci Times: Another scientist-writer joins the fold ; Automotive alloys ; Health care odyssey (Ayurvedic shines) ; the pancreatic fortress…
A name familiar in science news, but not as a byline, joined the roster today at the NYTimes‘s science crew. It is evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll of the Howard Hughes Institute and the University of Wisconsin – one of the more frequently quoted in news coverage of the field. He will be a roughly monthly columnist, the paper’s editors explain over his first contribution. It’s on shark’s teeth and the evolution of the great white. Good, if standard, news sense there – everybody likes to read about enormous man eating beasts. He even puts the book and movie “Jaws” in his opening vignette. He tells a historic mystery story that includes the likes of Agassiz and Darwin and winds up, on the basis of tooth serrations, moving great whites from the clade of an extinct monster shark to another one shared by makos. This seems to be no gamble by the Times. Carroll, author of highly regarded popular books, has already displayed his chops as a writer. (He also is not to be, but sometimes is, confused with the “other” Sean Carroll of science popularization – the theoretical physicist and book writer who is a mainstay at the blog Cosmic Variance. There he currently has a fabulous post featuring an Irish physicist and comic who wants to put homeopaths and chiropractors in a sack and beat it with a stick.)
Today’s section lead is an ultimately absorbing and old fashioned technology explainer, devoid of stylistic pyrotechnics it does not need, by Henry Fountain. It’s about the science and art of making better steel for automobiles. He actually goes through the high points of alloying and associated crystallography while using technical terms but without confusion. He also manages to convince editors to let him veer completely off the main thread for a startlingly vivid, momentary aside on viruses. It’s like whoosh, what was THAT about? Then back to the structural members of sedans.
Speaking of technical terms absorbed without confusion, The Tracker recalls from way back and as a young newspaperman learning that when it comes to newspaper graphics, readers ought to be able to understand their gist at a glance. Good luck on that with Nicholas Wade‘s piece on something really complicated: the palindromic means by which the Y chromosome checks itself for errors, and how the errors that do get by cause various kinds of sex anomalies. He wades into some deep water here. One must read slowly, and look at the diagram many times before getting it. So it goes sometimes.
Wade hasn’t such a daunting task in a second piece, on the bacteria that arrive in tap water and thrive in shower heads. Several outlets have this news (AP‘s Randolph E. Schmid, for instance). This’ll give some people the willies. It’s paired for obvious reasons with a somewhat different take on cleanliness - Tara Parker-Pope‘s column on hand washing as the first, and most sensible, weapons against the flu virus and other contagions. She buries one nifty bit of advice – when you gotta sneeze or cough, do it into the crook of your elbow, not your hands.
Other notable headlines:
- Abigail Zuger, MD: One Injury, 10 Countries: A Journey in Health Care ; Review of a book that, one supposes, ought to be required reading by staffers on Capitol Hill. Also topic of a ksjtracker post today by Paul Raeburn.
- Natalie Angier: An Organ of Many Talents, at the Root of Serious Ills ; An appreciation of the pancreas and an explanation why its tumors are so pernicious.
- John Markoff: Pursuing a Battery So Electric Vehicles Can Go the Extra Miles ; covered in separate post today, just scroll down.
As usual, much more in Whole Section ;
SEE ALSO in NYTimes today:
- Felicity Barringer – Hawaii Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids ; Ms. Barringer flies about this rural “southernmost corner of the United States” (and that is a remarkably rare but right way to put it) to see some of the wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and other alternates to costly imported energy fuel the state is embracing.
Charlie Petit
